handmade

5 thing i’ve learned from doing festivals

Now that I’ve completed my two craft festivals for the season (that’s the max I can handle right now), I wanted to put together a short list of the big takeaways I have from doing craft festivals. Take these with a grain of salt, because everyone has a different experience and I’ve really only done a few. Things may be totally different in different cities or with different organizers, I’m not sure.

photo via Capture Life Through the Lens by JONATHAN PHILLIPS

The very few I’ve done are Indie Craft Experience (Holiday 2015 and 2016), Root City Market (Holiday 2015), and American Field (Atlanta 2016). I mainly sell art prints of my own artwork so that may also affect my experience as a vendor. But I feel somewhat confident that if you are at all interested in doing shows like this, these things will be useful for you to know before going in.

austin: take heart shop

I stumbled into Take Heart with no idea or expectation of what would be inside. The sign outside said “modern, handmade, vintage” which are obviously three of the buzziest buzz words for crafty hipsters like me. Well, it turned out to be one of the cutest little shops I’ve ever been in Austin, or anywhere really.

You can find an assortment of lovely items in this shop, from beauty products to decor, stationary, art and more… the creative energy in this place is like a magnet for lovers of beautifully crafted objects (like me). The space was open and airy, with tons of sunlight flooding in.

quilts by ria leigh

The longer I look at these quilts by Ria Leigh, the more I fall in love with them. Her textile designs are everything I’m loving right now, with a nod to synthetic retro color palettes and a reverence for the tradition of geometric quilt pattern. I don’t think I can put it any more succinctly than she does on her own site:

Her work is situated within a matrilineal succession of makers and is influenced by her research on ancient cultural iconography, esoteric symbolism, pioneer practicality & Bauhaus ideology.

With work this bold and a statement so eloquently drafted, I can only presume that she’s been working on this for a lot longer than the ease of her patterns may suggest.

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